title: Interfacial growth as a model of tube-width heterogeneities in concentrated solutions of stiff polymers.
abstract: Recent experimental measurements of the distribution P(w) of transverse chain fluctuations w in concentrated solutions of F-actin filaments [B. Wang, J Guan, S. M. Anthony, S. C. Bae, K. S. Schweizer, and S. Granick, Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 118301 (2010); J. Glaser, D. Chakraborty, K. Kroy, I. Lauter, M. Degawa, N. Kirchgessner, B. Hoffmann, R. Merkel, and M. Giesen, Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 037801 (2010)] are shown to be well-fit to an expression derived from a model of the conformations of a single harmonically confined weakly bendable rod. The calculation of P(w) is carried out essentially exactly within a path integral approach that was originally applied to the study of one-dimensional randomly growing interfaces. Our results are generally as successful in reproducing experimental trends as earlier approximate results obtained from more elaborate many-chain treatments of the confining tube potential.
authors.affiliation: Department of Inorganic and Physical Chemistry, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560012, India.
authors.forename: Rati
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Sharma
authors.forename: Binny J
authors.initials: BJ
authors.lastname: Cherayil
mesh_terms: D008956:Models, Chemical; D011108:Polymers / Q000737:chemistry*; D012996:Solutions
chemical_list: D011108:Polymers; D012996:Solutions